me choosing my mutuals
— Beth Brower, The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vol. I
I was thinking about Maigu ridge yesterday and my controversial opinion that I do genuinely and objectively think it's the best climax of the three mxtx series despite not enjoying reading the scene. I think what makes it so special is that as opposed to the other climaxes, sv builds up a sense of gradual dread towards it from the very beginning. You know it's going to happen. Shen Yuan tells you: luo binghe merges the realms at the end of the story, this is an unavoidable fact of the canon. But as things start to go to shit and the plot signs are pointing towards it actually happening what once was a somewhat reassuring expectation that you know what's going to happen turns into an inevitable dread that you're desperately hoping is shifted off course before it's too late.
And then sv hits you with the second aspect of Maigu ridge that it's been slowly getting you to dread: the story always ends in sex. That's how things are fixed. Whether the characters want it or not, the genre formula says sex crowns all. That's just how both PIDW and romance works. So there's this horrific reversal of expectations as you're watching all of these things go to shit, and a sense of futility connecting you to sqq as you both know there's only one way the story's going to be able to end, no matter how much else has been changed throughout the narrative. And then rather than granting you any kind of reprieve with the scene itself, that maybe somehow it'll all be fixed easily in the last minute, the climax is viscerally horrific and messy and wildly uncomfortable to sit though. It's like it's sitting you down to say here, this is the type of story you buckled in to read, here's how it will happen. You're rewarded this farce of a conclusion that by all accounts should have been satisfying, but all of the illusion has been stripped out of it until there's just a deep unease left.
Roundup of excellent tags on this one:
#SO much can be said about what it’s doing thematically#but besides the subtext and commentary what it does TONALLY really does blow me away every time#that total dread really is the perfect way to describe it#the way when lbh is revealed to be powering the sword still#the way the bottom drops out even when you could see it coming#the slow slow almsot agonizing build up as sqq wanders the cave in#in the dark#alone (or so he thinks) with this tension building and building#it was hard to get thru the first read but now I appreciate it so much#this book doesn’t flinch away from EVERY aspect of the meta commentary#we are discussing sex and humanity and perspective and common trashy tropes and by god we are going the distance - via @opheliapurple
#it's consistent with the themes across the whole novel#in that svsss is taking these expected genre tropes and revealing just how miserable they actually are#like how it's fun to read a revenge narrative but terrifying and miserable to live through it#maigu ridge is the same#fuck or die plots or narrative climaxes where sex saves the world#they might be fun to read#but to live through? it fucking sucks#it's painful and it strips everyone involved of their agency#and i appreciate that svsss tackles it that way#and that it has lasting impacts on their relationship too since it was deeply traumatic for binghe - via @waitineedaname
#it also really addresses the system#the system could have given sqq the pendant and skipped this whole horror show#but it won't because that's not dramatic#that's not a romance#that's not the story you said you wanted#are you happy now?#we make fun of sqq for treating people like tropes and characters but the climax treats sqq like a character#the author is knocked out but the audience remains and hungers for blood - via @youremysunshine8
#that is sort of the redeeming power of shen qingqiu#he knows that xin mo can only be cleansed through sex or violence#but he offered himself up willingly for that#shen qingqiu of all characters understands when he's being coerced and stripped of his agency#he's spent the entirety of svsss resisting that#every time a wifeplot happens to him he slips sideways and manages to escape#that is inherent to the genreplay that is in svsss. sqq is a shizun he is not a wife#he has been adamant about being treated like a shizun instead of a wife to be conquered#but on this occasion he goes into it willingly. he walks across the ridge to go find the wifeplot and make it happen#horrific as that wife plot is#shen qingqiu's self sacrifice in that scene wasn't just physical and bodily it was also the agency that he prized and protected so adamantl#and he did it because he wanted to save luo binghe#the interesting irony of choosing to have your agency stripped but you chose it. knowing it all. choosing it anyway - via @silversquare
Cleaned up a warm-up sketch from this morning. Still rough but it is what it is. First time drawing these two!
People who are like “erm why would I take a 6 hour train when I can fly there in 45 minutes” are forgetting the mental toll of Being In An Airport which shortens your lifespan by 2 months each time
Learning about Brussels’ government in the least effective way possible
More history and politics crowd work from my Europe tour on YouTube
"do it scared" this "do it tired" that. well no one ever talks about the fucking insurmountable "do it with greasy hair"
when my shelter cat passes by me, he pauses for a second, and looks up. He is waiting for me to lean down, and touch my hand against his side, so that when he keeps walking, my hand skims across his fur. he doesn't really need attention. he has his own thoughts and plans. but after more than a year of living in our home, he has come to expect a moment of kindness whenever he crosses my path. if I don't do it, he will follow me. "where is your hand?" he asks, with his plaintive and impatient eyes. I give it to him. he bumps against it like a balloon before wandering away. this is a poem to me
This post has gone so much further than I expected it to. This is my sweet cat. His name is Eddie Potato.
9/18/2025
I think it's cute how so many art movements are simply called "new art" to differentiate "not like the old stuff". Contemporary dance. New wave fashion. Pop (literally popular) music. Art Nouveau. Modernism. Postmodernism. Even terms starting with neo- (neo-classicism, neo-expressionism) all are just saying NEW ART. And yet all of these things are now distinctive styles of the past. It's kind of beautiful how humanity never stops outgrowing itself. Art is a state of matter that refuses to sit still, old as soon as it is new, original upon its thousandth performance, new forever so long as there is someone who has not yet seen it, and old the second the artist picks up their instrument again.
New new NEW art (14)(THIS ONE!).docx
— Thirsty. Water. mhmm lan wangji are you sure it's water that you are thirsty for? because... ;)
THE UNTAMED 陈情令 (2019), ep. 36
justafanaticalhuman